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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I address your Lordships' House for the first time. I would like to begin by offering my thanks to the staff of the House of Lords for their help and kindness since my introduction. With the large number of new Peers coming in, I know that I am one of many maiden speakers to offer my thanks, but I hope that that will not diminish the sincerity of my words and my expression of gratitude for the enormous support and courtesy that I have received.

I learnt today that I am the youngest Baroness in your Lordships' House, and I feel particularly aware of the wealth of experience and wisdom around me. This engenders a great sense of humility in me as I stand here. But, since my introduction, I have been overwhelmed by the generosity and warmth of welcome from everyone and now, rather than feeling overawed, I am thoroughly proud and looking forward to making a strong and purposeful contribution to the work of your Lordships' House.

In preparing for my maiden speech, I have obviously taken a great deal of advice from my fellow Peers, and so it will come as no surprise that I plan to be brief. I aim to share with your Lordships a little more about my background and why I have chosen to contribute to this very important debate tonight.

I am the great-granddaughter of a south Wales miner. I have devoted much of my working life to the pursuance of social justice through the work of the voluntary sector and also the Labour Party, first campaigning for tenants' rights at Shelter, then for a national childcare strategy and then, throughout the 1990s, concentrating on health and patient advocacy. I spent some years at the National Asthma Campaign, where I had first-hand experience of the devastating impact of occupational lung disease.

For the past nine years, I have been chief executive of the breast cancer charity Breakthrough, which established the UK's first dedicated breast cancer research centre. Only last week, it launched a world-leading study into the genetics, environmental and
 
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lifestyle factors of breast cancer, which we hope will lead to the prevention of possibly in excess of 20,000 cases of breast cancer every year.

I have chosen to contribute to this debate for a number of reasons—most importantly because of my concern for the 17 million people living in the UK with chronic illness, the qualify of life of a large proportion of whom can be deeply undermined with no prospect of cure and who are cared for by an NHS that many would agree is designed to support acute rather than chronic illness.

Most often, the causes of chronic disease are poorly understood and prevention is merely an aspiration. But that is not so in the case of occupational disease. So it is absolutely right and a matter of great importance that those of us in our community whose early death or suffering could have been prevented by the actions of their employer should be fairly and fully compensated. But that is no easy matter. As my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in another place said only last week:

"Nothing can bring back a sick miner's health or restore years lost to ill health, and no sum can be traded for the loss of good health".—[Official Report, Commons, 9/9/04; col. 958.]

I am concerned not to stray into the realms of controversy or, indeed, to overrun my time, and therefore I shall confine my remarks to a few more general points. I congratulate the Government on establishing the largest compensation scheme of its kind in the world. It is a courageous effort and one which I hope will benefit literally hundreds of thousands of families throughout the UK. Such a multi-billion pound scheme, paying out more than £1 million a day for respiratory illness alone, will inevitably have problems, and I am encouraged by the open and constructive approach that appears to have been adopted by the parties involved in trying to identify solutions for the benefit of the miners and their families.

Whether regarding the difficulties for miners exposed to surface-level dust, which is not currently covered by the scheme, or with regard to those who receive offers that amount to less than their solicitor's fee, or with regard to, say, the uncertainty about the treatment of miners with occupational asthma, much needs to be resolved.

But, most importantly, I believe that the overwhelming message from this debate should be that there is no time to waste in addressing these claims. Living with emphysema or chronic bronchitis can be a nightmare. In the daytime, your world can be the size of an armchair and your sleepless nights a time of breathless fear and isolation. A protracted compensation claim will do nothing to lend dignity and reassurance in such a situation. So I urge that everything should be done to reach a speedy resolution to the huge number of outstanding claims and prove wrong the worrying newspaper assertions that miners and their families will have to wait many years for this vital compensation. I thank noble Lords for their kind attention.
 
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7.50 p.m.

Lord Dixon: My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract on again securing a debate on this important issue. This is the third such debate he has secured since he came to this House in 1997. He first raised the issue with a Ten-Minute Rule Bill way back in 1982 to get chronic bronchitis and emphysema prescribed as an industrial disease. He went on to present another four Bills on this subject.

He raised the matter when he was a Member of the House of Commons Select Committee on energy way back in the eighties and has raised many Questions and led many deputations to see various Ministers over the past 20 years in both Houses of Parliament. He has also written and given oral evidence to the Industrial Injuries Tribunal. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Morgan of Drefelin—I have a job pronouncing English words, let alone Welsh words. She gave a splendid and informative maiden speech and chose a very important subject on which to make it.

I want to emphasise that compensation for bronchitis and emphysema is not a benefit, gratuity or charity given out by the Government, but payment for an industrial injury which has been proved under common law. Miners suffer from this terrible disease mainly because they have inhaled coal dust through their working lives.

I agree with many of the points made by my noble friend Lord Lofthouse about the delays and some of the points made about those who exploit some of the miners. My honourable friend Kevan Jones, Member of Parliament for Durham North, highlighted a few of the cases which happened in the north-east in a debate which took place in Westminster Hall on 3 March this year.

This evening I want to raise a few points with the Minister that have been put to me by miners and their representatives I know personally. The first is the continued unreasonable delay where a revised offer is requested from the DTI when a mistake or an issue is questioned on the original offer. Miners have to wait for a long time for the first offer but there appears to be no clear or definite timescale for the DTI to consider a request from a miner's solicitor or even to respond to it. Sometimes many months or years elapse before a response is received to a revised offer. The result is that everyone is left wondering what has happened with the claim.

I accept that reasons vary in certain cases. For example, there could be a dispute on loss of earnings or a history of smoking. Mostly, this is on crossover claims which occur when a miner has claims under the vibration white finger and the chronic bronchitis and emphysema schemes in regard to the service element. The service element is when the miner can no longer carry out certain household tasks such as do-it-yourself, decoration, window cleaning, washing and maintenance of their cars and gardening jobs.

However, the calculation differs between the two schemes. Under the chronic bronchitis and emphysema scheme, anyone with a disability of 30 per cent or more qualifies for a services entitlement. Under the vibration
 
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white finger scheme, the services element is dependent on a number of factors, including the severity of the miner's condition identified by examining doctors under a second medical examination called MAP2.

These requests for revised offers are causing a lot of concern. I shall give a couple of examples. A claim was made on 25 February 1998. The MAP examination took place on 8 March 2001. An offer was made on 7 January 2003. A request for a revised offer was made on 5 February 2003. The reason for revision was a loss of earnings/smoking history. Still no reply has been given to those representatives of the miner. They waited a long time for the original offer. They requested a revised offer and it just seems to be hanging in the air.

I shall put a couple of points to the Minister. First, does my noble friend accept that where a revised offer is requested, it should be made within 14 days? If for some reason the DTI cannot respond to that particular request because it has to make examinations of the history, and so forth, it should reply in writing within 14 days giving a clear reason why it cannot make a revised offer instead of leaving the matter hanging in the air with no one knowing what is happening.

The second point I wish to raise is an issue I referred to in a previous debate, which concerns surface workers. The only surface workers who qualify under the chronic bronchitis and emphysema scheme are those who have worked for five years underground since 1954. I consider that if you are working on the surface at the pit you are just as likely to get dust in your lungs as miners who are working underground. It is like saying that people who smoke are the only ones who suffer from lung cancer. People who suffer from lung cancer often do so as a result of passive smoking.

The third point I want to raise briefly concerns the vibration white finger scheme. There are three groups who qualify. Under group one, if you have used pneumatic tools after 1975 for 12 months in certain categories laid out under the agreement you qualify for a payment. Under group two, if you have used pneumatic tools in certain categories laid out under the agreement for 24 months, you qualify for a payment. However, those in group three who do not fall within those categories, and have not used pneumatic tools for 12 or 24 months, get nothing. There is no doubt that in the mining industry, most miners have to use pneumatic tools at some given time. Unlike the shipyards where I spent 35 years, there is no strict demarcation. In the shipyards, only the riveters and caulkers use pneumatic tools. In the mines, most miners are requested at times by their employers to use them.

I hope that my noble friend will take these points into consideration in his reply.

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